CONTENTS

and inadvertenceWhile Galileo awaited the outcome of this first hearing, confined to assigned rooms in the palace of theInquisition, a second team of three theologians cross-examined the Dialogue itself. In less than a week, theseconsultors to the Holy Office, two of whom had served on the commission charged with reviewing the book theprevious September, turned in statements of varying length and vehemence, all concurring that the bookunabashedly backed Copernicus.“It is beyond question that Galileo teaches the Earth’s motion in writing,” concluded the Jesuit panelist, MelchiorInchofer. “Indeed his whole book speaks for itself. Nor can one teach in any other way those of futuregenerations and those who are absent except through writing . . . and he writes in Italian, certainly not to extendthe hand to foreigners or other learned men, but rather to entice to that view common people in whom errors veryeasily take root.”Not only did Inchofer submit the longest of the three condemnations of the Dialogue, but he also felt personallyaffronted by it. “If Galileo had attacked some individual thinker for his inadequate arguments in favor of thestability of the Earth, we might still put a favorable construction on his text,” Inchofer said; “but as he declareswar on everybody and regards as mental dwarfs all who are not Pythagorean or Copernican, it is clear enoughwhat he has in mind.”Galileo had pleaded ignorance of the more harshly worded warning. Now the consultors claimed he had violatedeven the most liberal interpretation of the more lenient reproof—as in fact he had. Although the Dialoguedisplayed the imprimatur of the Sacred Palace, it reeked of heresy all the same, leaving the tribunal in a quandarythe remainder of the month, trying to decide what must be done.On April 28, a memo from Father Commissary Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuola reached the papal vacationretreat at Castel Gandolfo, where Urban had closeted himself with nephew Francesco Cardinal Barberini.Although the pope had instigated the trial of Galileo, Cardinal Barberini, as one of the ten inquisitor judges in it,expended every possible effort to protect his former mentor and fellow Lyncean Academician from his uncleUrban’s anger. Perhaps Cardinal Barberini even suggested the very course of action that the commissary nowreported having successfully accomplished—that is, he had persuaded the Holy Congregation to let him dealextrajudicially with Galileo.“And not to lose time,” the father commissary wrote to Cardinal Barberini, “I went to reason with Galileoyesterday after luncheon, and after many exchanges between us I gained my point, by the grace of God; for Imade him see that he was clearly wrong and that in his book he had gone too far.”The commissary, a Dominican priest like Father Riccardi but trained as a military engineer, well understood thevirtues of the Copernican worldview. More than that, he personally preferred to separate the construction of theuniverse from considerations of Holy Writ. But in that private tête-à-tête, he persuaded Galileo to confess so asto let the affair end quietly with the least loss of face all around.“The Tribunal will retain its reputation and be able to use benignity with the accused,” the commissaryconcluded his report to Cardinal Barberini. “However things turn out, Galileo will recognize the grace accordedto him, and all the other satisfactory consequences that are wished for will follow.”On Saturday, the last day of April, Galileo reentered the commissary’s chambers for a second formal hearing.Over these intervening days of reflection, Galileo explained as he began the next set of his remarks recorded inthe trial transcript, it had occurred to him to reread his Dialogue, which he had not looked at for the past threeyears. He meant to see whether, contrary to his own beliefs, something had perchance fallen from his pen to giveoffense.“And, owing to my not having seen it for so long,” he explained, “it presented itself to me like a new writing and